Sunday, 25 November 2012

Swan Lake at The Royal Opera House.

I go to see an awful lot of shows. From concerts to theatre to musicals to opera to ballet. I just love it! I've never really posted much about them all before, but I thought maybe I should? Anyway, last night I finally went to see the Anthony Dowell production of Swan Lake at the Royal Opera House after years and years of wanting to see it live, rather than just on Youtube.

I saw Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake at the Royal Albert Hall during summer 2011 for the BBC Proms, but it was just the orchestra playing the score, with no actual ballet accompanying it. It was incredibly special with just the music, as the music itself is just magical, but to see the dancing alongside it last night just moved me to tears. It was just spectacular, I felt as though I was dreaming the entire performance.

Right from the first bar of the overture the hairs on the back of my neck were standing on end, and that crescendo towards the end during the main title piece gets me every time I hear it, but to actually see the ballet alongside the music, was just so so special. And despite seeing hundreds of shows throughout my life, I have never heard an applause like the one I heard last night, it was actually deafening!

The choreography of the ballet was beautiful, and although I'm no expert, everyone performed exceptionally well, and the ballerina playing Odette/Odile was effortlessly graceful and made it look so easy, she really did dance beautifully, there was so much emotion in every move she made.

I was also really surprised about how much I could see from my seats. I just got a £10 seat up in the slips, and you could see everything apart from a small corner of the stage. If you do go for the cheap seats like me though (I go to far too many shows to be able to afford the top seats every time), then I would suggest getting the 'CC' ones in the slips rather than the 'DD' ones like I had, as I think you can see more in the CC ones. You can see from the photos in this post (apologies for the poor quality of them) what my view was, and for just £10, it was great!

Anyway, I would highly recommend this ballet to absolutely anyone with any appreciation for music or dance, and I really am just ecstatic that I finally got to see it! And on it's closing show as well!